Yellow-rumped Warbler - Ross Feldner

This little warbler gets around. Its extensive range stretches from the eastern United States west to the Pacific, as well as Canada and south to Central America. During summer it prefers coniferous forests as its breeding habitat while during winter it is found in more open areas like shrublands.

Yellow-rumped Warblers are considered the most versatile foragers of all warblers, gleaning insects from leaves and catching them on the fly. They have even been spotted skimming insects from the surfaces of rivers and the ocean, picking them out of spider webs and snatching them off of piles of manure. Typically they eat caterpillars, beetles, ants, aphids, grasshoppers, gnats, craneflies and spiders. Males tend to forage higher in the trees than females.

If insects are scare they will turn to fruits include juniper berries, poison ivy, grapes, Virginia creeper and dogwood. They even been seen sipping the sweet honeydew liquid excreted by aphids. While foraging with other warbler species, they sometimes aggressively displace other warbler species.

Yellow-rumped Warblers generally build their nest far out on a main branch of a tree or tuck it close to the trunk in a secure fork of branches.